By Terry Boehmker
NKy Tribune sports reporter
The Northern Kentucky Volleyball Club finally has a national championship banner to hang in its training facility at the Town & Country Sports Center in Wilder.
Last Saturday, the club’s Tsunami 17-1 team won the National Division title at the USA Volleyball Girls’ Junior National Championships held at the Indianapolis Convention Center.
It’s the first time since the NKYVC was formed in 1999 that one of its teams has claimed a national championship, according to Katie Wesseling, director and co-founder of the club.
“We’ve had a lot of good teams, but in volleyball you can be really good and not end up on top,” Wesseling said. “But this team played really well through out the whole tournament.”
The Tsunami 17-1 team is made up of players from eight local high schools. They began practicing and playing matches together in January under the direction of head coach Taylor Tanner.
This is the third year that Tanner has coached the club’s 17-1 age group select team. Last year, her team lost a three-set match in the national tournament finals so she was very excited when Tsunami defeated Topeka Impact, 25-22, 17-25, 15-8, in Saturday’s championship match to finish on top in this year’s 48-team tournament.
After the final point in the third set, the Tsunami players dropped to the court and hugged each other in what’s become known as a “dog pile” celebration in sports.
“After the match, it was like, ‘Did we really do this,’” Tanner said. “When I saw the highlight video, (the announcers) said our dog pile on the court was the best they’d seen all tournament. It was awesome.”
Two of the Tsunami starters who played all six positions in the rotation were Hayley Bush of Ryle and Rachel McDonald of Newport Central Catholic. The other seven players on the roster — Kori Rudolph, Adrian Ell, Lauren Schuermann, Natalie Steibel, Peyton McCarthy, Olivia Schwamberger and Marisa Cerchio — attend high schools in Cincinnati.
McCarthy was selected as the team’s most valuable player in the national tournament with Bush and Schuermann joining her on the all-tournament team.
The Tsunami had a 10-1 record in tournament matches. The team’s only loss came in the first round of pool play, but the players rallied and won their next seven matches to take the title.
“I wasn’t nervous because last year we lost one match in pool play and still made it to the finals,” Tanner said of the team’s lone setback. “I think it actually gave the girls a little bit more motivation. They were thinking, ‘OK, we lost one, now we’ve really got to get serious about this.’”
Bush was one of two setters in the team’s rotation. The other one was Ell, who went through treatments for Hodgkin’s lymphoma for several months before practice began in January. Tanner said the girls practiced three times a week and competed in nine tournaments before going to the national championships.
“We had a lot of injuries, a lot of ups and downs and some matches we couldn’t finish (with a win),” Tanner said of the six months leading up to the season finale. “They did well at qualifiers and then we’d have injuries come up again. We weren’t sure if we were going to be healthy at the end, but they came through.”
The NKYVC Tsunami 13-1 team also had a good run in last week’s national tournament, placing third out of 48 teams in the National Division of its age group.